Milton Rokeach
From Notes
1918-88 was a Professor of psychology at Michigan State Univ.
Marshall cites a study on the extent to which followers of different religions embody compassion. Here is an example from the puddledancer site:
There is much violence in the Bible and much violence committed throughout history, and to this day, in the name of God. Is religion the source of violence?
Oh, no. Milton Rokeach's book "The Open and Closed Mind" is very important on this point. (Rokeach, the late author and professor of psychology at Michigan State University) took various people who seriously practice religion from the eight most populated religions and (evaluated) them on various measures of compassion. He found there was no difference in the basic religions regarding compassion.
However, if you take people who had no religious affiliation, they were far more compassionate than religious people. But he warns to be careful how you interpret this. In each religion he found two radically different groups; those who see the religion in a way that creates great violence and a minority who look at it in a way that is just the opposite.
However the "The open and closed mind", 1960 does not contain that work. Instead I think it's Rokeach's "Religious values and social compassion", which is much harder to come by. There is an article by Rokeach in Psychology today (1970) where he refers to the work, though that does not say which of his books write it up.
